by Max Brand
It was almost as if another personality had stepped into the room. The sounds from the street fell away, and there was the rustling of cloth somewhere, the cool lifting of hair from his forehead, and an odd sense of motion — as if the wind were blowing through him. But something else came with the breeze, and though he noted it at first with only a subconscious discontent, it beat gradually into his mind, a light ticking, very rapid, and faint, and sounding in an irregular rhythm. He wanted to straighten out that rhythm and make the flutter of tapping regular. Then it began to take on a meaning; it framed words.
“Philip Lord, jailed for embezzlement.”
“Hell!” burst out Ben Connor. “The telegraph!”
He started up from his chair, feeling betrayed, for that light, irregular tapping was the voice of the world from which he had fled. A hard, cool mind worked behind the gray eyes of Ben Connor, but as he fingered the cigar his brain was fumbling at a large idea. Forty-Second and Broadway was calling him back.
When he looked out the window, now, the mountains were flat shapes against a flat sky, with no more meaning than a picture.
The sounder was chattering: “Kid Lane wins title in eighth round. Lucky punch dethrones lightweight champion.” Ben Connor swallowed hard and found that his throat was dry. He was afraid of himself — afraid that he would go back. He was recalled from his ugly musing by the odor of the cigar, which had burned out and was filling the room with a rank smell; he tossed the crumbled remnants through the window, crushed his hat upon his head, and went down, collarless, coatless, to get on the street in the sound of men’s voices. If he had been in Manhattan he would have called up a pal; they would have planned an evening together; but in Lukin —
At the door below he glared up and down the street. There was nothing to see but a light buggy which rolled noiselessly through the dust. A dog detached itself from behind the vehicle and came to bark furiously at his feet. The kicking muscles in Connor’s leg began to twitch, but a voice shouted and the mongrel trotted away, growling a challenge over its shoulder. The silence fell once more. He turned and strode back to the desk of the hotel, behind which Jack Townsend sat tilted back in his chair reading a newspaper.
“What’s doing in this town of yours to-night?” he asked.
The proprietor moistened a fat thumb to turn the page and looked over his glasses at Connor.
“Appears to me there ain’t much stirrin’ about,” he said. “Except for the movies down the street. You see, everybody’s there.”
“Movies,” muttered Connor under his breath, and looked savagely around him.
What his eyes fell on was a picture of an old, old man on the wall, and the rusted stove which stood in the center of the room with a pipe zigzagging uncertainly toward the ceiling. Everything was out of order, broken down — like himself.
“Looks to me like you’re kind of off your feet,” said Jack Townsend, and he laid down his paper and looked wistfully at his guest. He made up his mind. “If you’re kind of dry for a drink,” he said, “I might rustle you a flask of red-eye—”
“Whisky?” echoed Connor, and moistened his lips. Then he shook his head. “Not that.”
He went back to the door with steps so long and heavy that Jack Townsend rose from his chair, and spreading his hands on the desk, peered after the muscular figure.
“That gent is a bad hombre,” pronounced Jack to himself. He sat down again with a sigh, and added: “Maybe.”
At the door Connor was snarling: “Quiet? Sure; like a grave!”
The wind freshened, fell away, and the light, swift ticking sounded again more clearly. It mingled with the alkali scent of the dust — Manhattan and the desert together. He felt a sense of persecuted virtue. But one of his maxims was: “If anything bothers you, go and find out about it.”
Ben Connor largely used maxims and epigrams; he met crises by remembering what some one else had said. The ticking of the sounder was making him homesick and dangerously nervous, so he went to find the telegrapher and see the sounder which brought the voice of the world into Lukin.
A few steps carried him to a screen door through which he looked upon a long, narrow office.
In a corner, an electric fan swung back and forth through a hurried arc and fluttered papers here and there. Its whining almost drowned the ticking of the sounder, and Ben Connor wondered with dull irritation how a tapping which was hardly audible at the door of the office could carry to his room in the hotel. He opened the door and entered.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS A room not more than eight feet wide, very long, with the floor, walls, and ceiling of the same narrow, unpainted pine boards; the flooring was worn ragged and the ceiling warped into waves. Across the room a wide plank with a trapdoor at one end served as a counter, and now it was littered with yellow telegraph blanks, and others, crumpled up, were scattered about Connor’s feet. No sooner had the screen door squeaked behind him and shut him fairly into the place than the staccato rattling of the sounder multiplied, and seemed to chatter from the wall behind him. It left an echoing in the ear of Ben Connor which formed into the words of his resolution, “I’ve made my stake and I’m going to beat it. I’m going to get away where I can forget the worries. To-day I beat ’em. Tomorrow the worries will beat me.”
That was why he was in Lukin — to forget. And here the world had sneaked up on him and whispered in his ear. Was it fair?
It was a woman who “jerked lightning” for Lukin. With that small finger on the key she took the pulse of the world.
“Belmont returns—” chattered the sounder.
Connor instinctively covered his ears. Then, feeling that he was acting like a silly child, he lowered his hands.
Another idea had come to him that this was fate — luck — his luck. Why not take another chance?
He wavered a moment, fighting the temptation and gloomily studying the back of the operator. The cheapness of her white cotton dress fairly shouted at him. Also her hair straggled somewhat about the nape of her neck. All this irritated Connor absurdly.
“Fifth race,” said the sounder: “Lady Beck, first; Conqueror, second—”
Certainly this was fate tempting tune.
Connor snatched a telegraph blank and scribbled a message to Harry Slocum, his betting commissioner during this unhappy vacation.
“Send dope on Murray handicaps time — trials of Trickster and Caledonian. Hotel Townsend.”
This done, having tapped sharply on the counter to call the operator’s attention, he dropped his elbows on the plank and scowled downward in profound reverie. They were pouring out of Belmont Park, now, many a grim face and many a joyous face. Money had come easy and gone easy. Ah, the reckless bonhomie of that crowd, living for to-day only, because “to-morrow the ponies may have it!” A good day for the bookies if that old cripple, Lady Beck, had found her running legs. What a trimming they must have given the wise ones!
At this point another hand came into the circle of his vision and turned the telegram about. A pencil flicked across the words, checking them swiftly. Connor was fascinated by that hand, it was so cool, so slender and deft. He glanced up to her face and saw a resolute chin, a smiling mouth which was truly lovely, and direct eyes as dark as his own. She carried her head buoyantly, in a way that made Connor think, with a tingle, of some clean-blooded filly at the post.
The girl made his change, and shoving it across, she bent her head toward the sounder. The characters came through too swiftly for even Ben Connor’s sharp ear, but the girl, listening, smiled slowly.
“Something about soft pine?” queried Connor.
She brightened at this unexpected meeting-point. Her eyes widened as she studied him and listened to the message at the same time, and she accomplished this double purpose with such calm that Connor felt a trifle abashed. Then the shadow of listening vanished, and she concentrated on Connor.
“Soft pine is up,” she nodded. “I knew it would climb as soon as old Lucas bou
ght in.”
“Speculator in Lukin, is he?”
“No. California. The one whose yacht burned at Honolulu last year. Sold pine like wild fire two months ago; down goes the price. Then he bought a little while ago, and now the pine skyrockets. He can buy a new yacht with what he makes, I suppose!”
The shade of listening darkened her eyes again. “Listen!” She raised a hushing forefinger that seemed tremulous in rhythm with the ticking.
“Wide brims are in again,” exclaimed the operator, “and wide hats are awful on me; isn’t that the luck?”
She went back to her key with the message in her hand, and Connor, dropping his elbows on the counter, watched her send it with swift almost imperceptible flections of her wrist.
Then she sat again with her hands folded in her lap, listening. Connor turned his head and glanced through the door; by squinting he could look over the roof just across the street and see the shadowy mountains beyond; then he looked back again and watched the girl listening to the voice of the outer world. The shock of the contrast soothed. He began to forget about Ben Connor and think of her.
The girl turned in her chair and directly faced him, and he saw that she moved her whole body just as she moved her hand, swiftly, but without a jerk; she considered him gravely.
“Lonely?” she inquired. “Or worried?”
She spoke with such a commonplace intonation that one might have thought it her business to attend to loneliness and worries.
“As a matter of fact,” answered Ben Connor, instinctively dodging the direct query, “I’ve been wondering how they happened to stick a number-one artist on this wire.
“I’m not kidding,” he explained hastily. “You see, I used to jerk lightning myself.”
For the first time she really smiled, and he discovered what a rare thing a smile may be. Up to that point he had thought she lacked something, just as the white dress lacked a touch of color.
“Oh,” she nodded. “Been off the wire long?”
Ben Connor grinned. It began with his lips; last of all the dull gray eyes lighted.
“Ever since a hot day in July at Aqueduct. The Lorrimer Handicap on the 11th of July, to be exact. I tossed up my job the next day.”
“I see,” she said, becoming aware of him again. “You played Tip-Top Second.”
“The deuce! Were you at Aqueduct that day?”
“I was here — on the wire.” He restrained himself with an effort, for a series of questions was Connor’s idea of a dull conversation. He merely rubbed his knuckles against his chin and looked at her wistfully.
“He nipped King Charles and Miss Lazy at the wire and squeezed home by a nose — paid a fat price, I remember,” went on the girl. “I suppose you had something down on him?”
“Did a friend of yours play that race?”
“Oh, no; but I was new to the wire, then, and I used to cut in and listen to everything that came by.”
“I know. It’s like having some one whisper secrets in your ear, at first, isn’t it? But you remember the Lorrimer, eh? That was a race!”
The sounder stopped chattering, and by an alternation in her eyes he knew that up to that moment she had been giving two-thirds of her attention to the voice of the wire and the other fraction to him; but now she centered upon him, and he wanted to talk. As if, mysteriously, he could share some of the burden of his unrest with the girl. Most of all he wished to talk because this office had lifted him back to the old days of “lightning jerking,” when he worked for a weekly pay-check. The same nervous eagerness which had been his in that time was now in this girl, and he responded to it like a call of blood to blood.
“A couple of wise ones took me out to Aqueduct that day: I had all that was coming to me for a month in my pocket, and I kept saying to myself: ‘They think I’ll fall for this game and drop my wad; here’s where I fool ’em!’”
He chuckled as he remembered.
“Go on,” said the girl. “You make me feel as if I were about to make a clean-up!”
“Really interested?”
She fixed an eager glance on him, as though she were judging how far she might let herself go. Suddenly she leaned closer to Connor.
“Interested? I’ve been taking the world off the wire for six years — and you’ve been where things happen.”
“That’s the way I felt at Aqueduct when I saw the ponies parade past the grand stand the first time,” he nodded. “They came dancing on the bitt, and even I could see that they weren’t made for use; legs that never pulled a wagon, and backs that couldn’t weight. Just toys; speed machines; all heart and fire and springy muscles. It made my pulse jump to the fever point to watch them light-foot it along the rail with the groom in front on a clod of a horse. I felt that I’d lived the way that horse walked — downheaded, and I decided to change.”
He stopped short and locked his stubby fingers together, frowning at her so that the lines beside his mouth deepened.
“I seem to be telling you the story of my life,” he said. Then he saw that she was studying him, not with idle curiosity, but rather as one turns the pages of an absorbing book, never knowing what the next moment will reveal or where the characters will be taken.
“You want to talk; I want to hear you,” she said gravely. “Go ahead. Besides — I don’t chatter afterward. They paraded past the grand stand, then what?”
Ben Connor sighed.
“I watched four races. The wise guys with me were betting ten bucks on every race and losing on red-hot tips; and every time I picked out the horse that looked good to me, that horse ran in the money. Then they came out for the Lorrimer. One of my friends was betting on King Charles and the other on Miss Lazy. Both of them couldn’t win, and the chance was that neither of them would. So I looked over the line as it went by the stand. King Charles was a little chestnut, one of those long fellows that stretch like rubber when they commence running; Miss Lazy was a gangling bay. Yes, they were both good horses, but I looked over the rest, and pretty soon I saw a rangy chestnut with a white foreleg and a midget of a boy up in the saddle. ‘No. 7 — Tip-Top Second,’ said the wise guy on my right when I asked him; ‘a lame one.’ Come to look at him again, he was doing a catch step with his front feet, but I had an idea that when he got going he’d forget all about that catch and run like the wind. Understand?”
“Just a hunch,” said the girl. “Yes!”
She stepped closer to the counter and leaned across it. Her eyes were bright. Connor knew that she was seeing that picture of the hot day, the crowd of straw hats stirring wildly, the murmur and cry that went up as the string of racers jogged past.
“They went to the post,” said Connor, “and I got down my bet — a hundred dollars, my whole wad — on Tip-Top Second. The bookie looked just once at me, and I’ll never forget how his eyebrows went together. I went back to my seat.”
“You were shaking all over, I guess,” suggested the girl, and her hands were quivering.
“I was not,” said Ben Connor, “I was cold through and through, and never moved my eyes off Tip-Top Second. His jockey had a green jacket with two stripes through it, and the green was easy to watch. I saw the crowd go off, and I saw Tip-Top left flat-footed at the post.”
The girl drew a breath. Connor smiled at her. The hot evening had flushed his face, but now a small spot of white appeared in either cheek, and his dull eyes had grown expressionless. She knew what he meant when he said that he was cold when he saw the string go to the post.
“It — it must have made you sick!” said the girl.
“Not a bit. I knew the green jacket was going to finish ahead of the rest as well as I knew that my name was Ben Connor. I said he was left at the post. Well, it wasn’t exactly that, but when the bunch came streaking out of the shoot, he was half a dozen lengths behind. It was a mile and an eighth race. They went down the back stretch, eight horses all bunched together, and the green jacket drifting that half dozen lengths to the rear. The wise guys turned
and grinned at me; then they forgot all about me and began to yell for King Charles and Miss Lazy.
“The bunch were going around the turn and the two favorites were fighting it out together. But I had an eye for the green jacket, and halfway around the turn I saw him move up.”
The girl sighed.
“No,” Connor continues, “he hadn’t won the race yet. And he never should have won it at all, but King Charles was carrying a hundred and thirty-eight pounds, and Miss Lazy a hundred and thirty-three, while Tip-Top Second came in as a fly-weight eighty-seven pounds! No horse in the world could give that much to him when he was right, but who guessed that then?
“They swung around the turn and hit the stretch. Tip-Top took the curve like a cart horse. Then the bunch straightened out, with King Charles and Miss Lazy fighting each other in front and the rest streaking out behind like the tail of a flag. They did that first mile in 1.38, but they broke their hearts doing it, with that weight up.
“They had an eighth to go — one little measly furlong, with Tip-Top in the ruck, and the crowd screaming for King Charles and Miss Lazy; but just exactly at the mile post the leaders flattened. I didn’t know it, but the man in front of me dropped his glasses and his head. ‘Blown!’ he said, and that was all. It seemed to me that the two in front were running as strongly as ever, but Tip-Top was running better. He came streaking, with the boy flattening out along his neck and the whip going up and down. But I didn’t stir. I couldn’t; my blood was turned to ice water.